DOJ sentences four for child porn; used bitcoin, Tor to cover tracks

Four men from across the U.S. and Canada were sentenced to decades in prison for running what the Justice Department called a “highly sophisticated” encrypted underground network for trading child pornography.

The Justice Department said the four convicted men ran a “global child exploitation enterprise” called “The Giftbox Exchange” on the open-source Tor Network, which uses an overlay network for directing internet traffic, obfuscating the details, locations and identities of those using it.

The website was paid for through bitcoin transactions, and the men “used other advanced technological means to thwart law enforcement efforts, including file encryption and cryptography.”

Patrick D. Falte, 29, of Franklin, Tennessee, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, three counts of advertising child pornography, and three counts of distributing child pornography. Benjamin A. Faulkner, 28, of Ontario,…